I'm a full 20 minutes late for my church pastor's farewell dinner and here I am, sitting at home after just having awoken from an almost-5-hour sleep. Sleeping in the afternoon and waking up after it's gotten dark makes you feel like you're an alzheimer's patient experiencing a rare moment of lucidity.

I'm thinking that in about 4 hours, the year will be officially over, and 2008 will begin. I kind of hate how you aren't given any free minutes between the end and start of a year - a few moments where time stops and everything hangs in limbo for you to catch your breath after the passing of an entire year and anticipate the arrival of a new one. Without these free minutes it just feels as though we're all torn from our poor tired lethargic souls and too soon thrust into rejuvenation.

I'm listening to the cj 2007 orientation 1 mass dance song; i think that these are one of those songs that you will immediately associate with cj even long after you've left it, like a song you 'had' with an ex-lover. Never in my life have I actually looked forward to going to school, or thought of my class as a reason to drag my nocturnal existence out of bed as I did this year and probably will, too, next year, when we will all be mugging hard for our 'A' levels even though it was just yesterday that we were doing the same for our 'O's.

Every single new year's eve before this one I thought of a coming new year as a chance to start afresh, to wipe clean the slate on which your errors have been recorded. But this year I think different: a new year's just another measured stretch of our journeys, a mercy opportunity for more experiences, laughter and tears. I haven't been the nicest person this year and I might not be either next year but I think that that's okay because life is a journey, not a destination, and you get points for trying. So here goes.